Evil Dead: The Series 23: "Sometimes Bad Is bad"
by OmarSnake
Summary: Well, there's this Bad version of Ash, ya see...


"Evil Dead: The Series" Episode 23  
  
"Sometimes, Bad Is Bad"  
  
By: OmarSnake  
  
For longer than he could remember, he had dug.  
  
He clawed, desperately, against the dirt and rock that surrounded him. He longed for fresh air, for sunlight, for anything but the crushing pressure that pushed in on every inch of his skin.  
  
His progress was slow but steady, like swimming through concrete that had not yet hardened. If he paused to rest, he knew he would not be able to continue.  
  
It would have been so easy to give up, to surrender to the agony his limbs felt. But he refused to give in, refused to stop. He would succeed. He had to. He had no choice.  
  
It was a claustrophobic nightmare of the highest order. His nostrils filled with dust and dirt, his fingernails were bloodied and worn, his body was covered with scars from the jagged rock shards he pushed his way through.  
  
He just hoped he was digging in the right direction. The irony, if it turned out he had been burrowing deeper into his 'grave', would have been too much to bear.  
  
But then, he felt the earth give.  
  
And his fingers poked through to the surface.  
  
He felt a sudden wave of relief, only to realize his struggle was far from over. With tremendous effort, he worked away the rest of the debris that surrounded him.  
  
He had been cheated, in a sense. Sunlight wasn't the first thing he saw; the night sky was. Still, there was nothing as beautiful as the sight of all those stars, and the red of the horizon as sunset drew to a close. He gasped and groaned and heaved his way up, climbing to his feet. Around him was an open, rocky field, barren but for a few stray trees in the distance.  
  
And he stood, taking deep breaths of the morning air.  
  
And he smiled.  
  
Because he knew, now that he had gotten out of that predicament, taking out Ash Williams would be a walk in the park.  
  
And thinking about that, Bad Ash laughed maniacally.  
  
Somewhere in Mesopotamia, Genevieve Thoreau was awakened by the sound of a helicopter descending on the camp. She squinted, and grumbled to herself, unhappy to have been awakened from a perfectly lovely dream involving herself and a young Burt Lancaster.  
  
She climbed out of bed, still clad in her nightrobe, and threw on a pair of boots and stormed out the door.  
  
If it was those lackeys Fisk and Wilcox again, she thought angrily to herself...  
  
The copter landed.  
  
Genevieve squinted at the night sky, not sure what time it was... dawn was hours away, still.  
  
From a nearby tent, Chance Mackenzie emerged, buttoning his shirt. Thoreau smirked as she caught a glimpse of Vera Wong, a graduate student who was working on the dig, peering out from the same tent.  
  
"What's going on, ma'am?" Mackenzie asked.  
  
"I don't know," Thoreau said. "But it better be good---"  
  
The helicopter landed, and a figure emerged from it. Even in silhouette, Thoreau recognized it, and took a deep breath.  
  
Mackenzie's eyebrows raised; he was not used to his mentor being even the slightest bit startled. Genevieve Thoreau was a woman who would look upon the discovery of the lost third tablet of Moses with the same analytic calmness as she would a broken piece of 14th-century pottery.  
  
"Mr. Szabo," she said.  
  
"Doctor Thoreau," the shadowy figure replied evenly.  
  
"I... I have to say, I wasn't expecting a personal visit from you..."  
  
"After your call, I had to make a special trip," Szabo said. "You found it?"  
  
"We found something," Thoreau replied. "Follow me..."  
  
Mackenzie watched as Szabo followed Thoreau into the main tent.  
  
Then, Mackenzie glanced at his watch. It had been after midnight local time when he called New York with the news that they had found what might be the Kandarian Sheath. How could Szabo have possibly made his way all the way overseas and chartered a helicopter so quickly?  
  
Eddie Cabrilliano was a literally a few hours shy of his 17th birthday on the day he died.  
  
It came unexpectedly, to say the least.  
  
He had been out joyriding with his cousin Miguel in their uncle Luis's Corvette. It was a beautiful car, candy apple red with black flames painted along the lower half. Eddie desperately wanted a car just like it, but his mother had said no. She always said no. Not safe, she said. Cars like that made their drivers go too fast, and beyond that they made easy targets for the police. Besides, it would take years and years working at the unfinished furniture warehouse before Eddie could afford anything nearly that nice.  
  
So Eddie had to be content with the fact that Miguel loved to show off his pop's wheels.  
  
They were turning down a back road, and Miguel had let Eddie drive. Eddie gripped the wheel, focusing his attention on the winding path. He was going about 80 miles an hour, maybe a bit more --- fast enough to feel the thrill of danger, he thought, but not too fast if he needed to react suddenly -- when he saw the figure standing in his way.  
  
Eddie swerved even before Miguel began yelling and pointing that direction.  
  
"Look out!!!" Miguel cried.  
  
"I know!" Eddie snapped as he leaned into the turn. The Corvette skidded to a halt, mere feet from the shadowy figure.  
  
"What are you, crazy?" Miguel yelled at the figure as he climbed out of the car, shaking his fist and racing forward.  
  
The figure looked up at him.  
  
In the pale moonlight, Bad Ash resembled nothing more than a skinned cadaver. His flesh was torn and rotted, his eyes seemingly vacant, bone showing through the shreds of skin on his forehead and cheeks.  
  
Despite the fact that he was still a good twenty feet away, Miguel took a few cautious steps back.  
  
Eddie stood halfway inside the car; he had been just about to climb out of the Corvette when he saw what the figure in the road looked like.  
  
"Get in the car, Mig," he said under his breath.  
  
"What the fuck are you?" Miguel asked.  
  
Bad Ash grinned and held out his arms, looking down at his mangled torso. "Yeah, I'm a mess, ain't I?" he asked, his voice gravelly and gutteral.  
  
Miguel turned to run back to the car. Before he could even start that direction, Bad Ash bounded toward him, covering the twenty foot distance in a single leap, and grabbed Miguel around the head. Miguel struggled for all of half a second before his neck snapped, and he slumped.  
  
Eddie screamed and jumped behind the wheel. As the engine roared to life, Bad Ash took another jump and landed on the hood of the car. Eddie looked up just in time to see the walking corpse grin once again. Then, Bad Ash thrust an arm through the windshield, grabbing the young man's face and pulling him head-first out of the car.  
  
The impact of the Corvette smashing into a nearby tree threw both Eddie and Bad Ash to the ground.  
  
But while Eddie coughed blood and struggled to get to his feet, Bad Ash stood effortlessly.  
  
Eddie tried to roll over. He couldn't. The pain was worse than anything he could have imagined. Eddie heard the footsteps of the walking corpse and closed his eyes tight, using every ounce of energy he could muster to pray for salvation.  
  
The footsteps passed.  
  
Eddie opened his eyes, not understanding why he was not dead.  
  
He heard noises, from over where the corpse had walked… from where his cousin Miguel lay dead in the street. Eddie couldn't bring himself to look in that direction, but the sound of tearing flesh was unmistakable. Was this zombie eating Miguel, or just tearing him to pieces?  
  
Eddie closed his eyes, tears streaming down his cheeks.  
  
His birthday was tomorrow… he had planned to stay out with Miguel til after midnight, and have a beer to celebrate before sneaking back into his home. But Eddie was certain he wouldn't live to see his birthday.  
  
Eddie was right. In a completely wrong sort of way.  
  
When Tyler Wilcox strode into Lajos Szabo's darkened office, he saw no sign of his employer.  
  
The room was enormous... since it was never lit, Wilcox had never figured out the exact dimensions of it, or what all was in it. There was a small desk lamp, illuminating the papers Szabo had been going over, but somehow its light never seemed to penetrate the darkness. The only other light in the room came from the fish tank, six feet long and imbedded in the western wall, in which creatures swirled and tumbled patiently.  
  
"Mister Szabo?" Wilcox asked, looking around and squinting. No answer, no movement.  
  
"Are you here, Mister Szabo?" Wilcox asked again, stepping closer to the desk and looking around for any sign of movement, listening for any breath, anything.  
  
Dead silence.  
  
Wilcox tilted his head as he glanced down at the papers on Szabo's desk. Some were generic memos, the sort of thing one might find in any office, detailing stock market changes and new company policies. Others were scribblings, written in some language Wilcox did not recognize. Not even in a famliar alphabet...more like hieroglyphics than actual letters, Wilcox thought to himself.  
  
There was a splash of movement over at the fish tank.  
  
Wilcox glanced over as one of the tentacled things that moved about in the tank twirled down from breaking the surface.  
  
"Mister Szabo?" Wilcox repeated.  
  
With still no reply, Wilcox cautiously glanced down at the papers again. The symbols were freshly-written, and incomplete. Maybe it was some sort of shorthand Mr. Szabo had developed to make sure no one could read his---  
  
"Yes?" a voice said suddenly, causing Wilcox to practically jump out of his skin. He looked in the direction it came from, where a silhouette stood against the fish tank.  
  
"Ah, there you are, sir," Wilcox said, taking a deep breath.  
  
"Yes, there I am," Szabo's voice replied evenly, coldly. "You have something to report?"  
  
Wilcox nodded. "Something's happened in Detroit, sir," he said.  
  
"What a wonderfully specific report," Szabo said coldly as he dropped a goldfish into the tank, where a tentacled thing swam toward it. Before the goldfish could get its bearings and swim away, it was gone.  
  
"What I mean, sir, is that Mr. Fisk wanted me to let you know there's been a 'quarry breach'...."  
  
Szabo's neck stiffened.  
  
"He didn't explain it, but he said you'd know what it meant," Wilcox continued.  
  
"I do," Szabo replied. "I trust there were no more details."  
  
"He's on his way to help the field office investigate, sir," Wilcox explained.  
  
"Good."  
  
Wilcox stood there, not sure what to do.  
  
Szabo ignored him, and fed a few more goldfish to the things that moved through the murky water of the tank.  
  
Newton Fisk hummed to himself as he played Solitaire on his laptop computer.  
  
He was riding in a private jet, headed from New York to Detroit. The stewardess stopped and deposited a Bloody Mary on his tray table, then smiled pleasantly and departed. Fisk took a long sip and smiled to himself.  
  
He had a goal, and he liked that. It made him happy when his job was easily defined, when there was a clear target.  
  
He had to find the evil replicant of Ash Williams.  
  
Okay, it wasn't exactly an easy goal. The first time Fisk had encountered him, 'Bad Ash' had already been beaten by 'Good Ash'. Getting rid of him was a simple matter of burying him alive --- er, undead -- in a rock quarry.  
  
They knew that was only a temporary fix, that eventually Bad Ash would turn back up. That's why security cameras were set up, and alarms set to warn the Detroit office when something happened on that abandoned piece of earth.  
  
The way the events had been described to Fisk, the creature had burst out of the ground like something out of "Return of the Living Dead", then staggered to an electrified fence, torn it apart, and wandered off into the night. Fisk wanted to see the tapes... see what condition Bad Ash was in, whether he seemed to be acting intelligently or was simply a zombie at this point.  
  
If Bad Ash had managed to dig his way out from under tons of rock, he might be too powerful to defeat, at least in a fair fight. Of course, Fisk had no intention of fighting him one on one.  
  
No, all Fisk expected to do was track him down... employing the skills Fisk always wished he had more of. When he was a child, he had idolized Joe Friday, and wanted nothing more than to follow his hero into a life of crimefighting.  
  
But he had not been physically fit or mentally sharp enough, and wound up in business management instead. That path indirectly led him to Lajos Szabo's employ, where he found that his willingness to do whatever needed doing (while keeping his mouth shut and taking Szabo's abuse) helped him rise in the ranks.  
  
Once he knew where Bad Ash was and how formidable he was, it was a simple matter of reporting to Mr. Z, and finding out what to do next.  
  
Perhaps unleash a demon of some sort. Fisk still had a soft spot for the Reaper demons. They had been used with great success when a rival corporation, MegaCom, had made a bid to overtake Szabo's GlobeCo empire. All it took was a few Reapers unleashed inside the board meeting to put an end to that would-be takeover. Granted, a Reaper had been less successful against Ash, but that had simply been a test run, seeing how it would fare against a man who killed Deadites on a regular basis.  
  
There was always the Shel'shebakg that Szabo kept locked away in the sub- sub-basements of the GlobeCo Building. Or any of a dozen other demons and creatures from the nether-realm that Szabo could summon as needed. Or, for that matter, a good old-fashioned rocket launcher might do the trick. Whatever Mr. Z wanted.  
  
Fisk found it such a relief to answer to a boss, so he wasn't responsible for the decision-making, or for sticky questions of morality. He had pledged to follow Mr. Z's orders, for better or worse.  
  
And he knew that being on Lajos Szabo's side was far preferable to being against him, if things went the way Szabo planned for them to go.  
  
When Lajos Szabo walked into the gymnasium, Gretchen Halspont was in the process of disarming a man with a chainsaw.  
  
The man in question was Byerly, one of the more nimble security guards on the staff, and he wore the chainsaw on an assembly hooked onto his right arm. He lunged forward, and Gretchen rolled easily to one side and threw out a length of chain, which wrapped around the blade of the chainsaw, jamming it up.  
  
Byerly yelped instinctively, then dove for her. Gretchen did a backwards cartwheel to dodge, then a spin-kick when Byerly tried to maintain his balance. Byerly fell to the mat, cursing.  
  
Szabo clapped, slowly and forcefully. Gretchen looked his direction, not having heard him enter the gym, and smiled broadly.  
  
"Thank you, sir," she said.  
  
"Excellent work," Szabo said in reply. He looked over at Oracle, who had been videotaping the mock battle. "Oracle, my dear, we need to speak."  
  
Gretchen, meanwhile, offered a hand to Byerly to help him up. Byerly scowled and got up on his own. Gretchen shrugged and turned away to get some Gatorade.  
  
Szabo and Oracle stepped into a small room off to one side.  
  
"The evil replicant of Ash is on the loose," Oracle said.  
  
"Right the first time," Szabo replied. "His timing cannot be coincidence. This is a potential fly in the ointment I do NOT need."  
  
Oracle nodded. "We already know that the Deadites are aware of your plans, and that they will stop at nothing to prevent them."  
  
"Is she ready?" Szabo asked.  
  
"She certainly seems to be," Oracle replied, glancing at the door. "She's beaten every opponent I've put up against her. And ever since Mr. Fisk and Mr. Wilcox retrieved the Kandarian dagger, I've had her practicing with it as well.... while wearing gloves, to prevent its madness from infecting her."  
  
"She'll find this useful," Szabo said, holding up a wrapped piece of cloth.  
  
Oracle took it from his hands. "I think I know what this is," she said wryly.  
  
Inside the cloth was a sheath made of bronze and textured leather. There was an unmistakeable air of antiquity about it.  
  
"So they found it," Oracle said, examining the object. "As long as she has this, the dagger won't drive her insane?"  
  
"That is the theory, at least," Szabo replied. "That is how Suba of Kingusili was able to wield the dagger as a weapon against the Deadites three thousand years ago... until she grew careless."  
  
Oracle nodded. "I'll have Gretchen incorporate it into her practice sessions."  
  
"Practice is still a far cry from the real thing," Szabo said. "But at least she only has to hit the target once."  
  
Eddie never felt so alive. Which was ironic, considering that he wasn't.  
  
He flexed his arms, marvelling at the sinew visible through his torn flesh. "So will I start to rot, or what?" he asked.  
  
He was in the passenger seat of the badly damaged Corvette as it drove down the winding roads.  
  
Behind the wheel was Bad Ash, new muscle and skin stretched across his torso... muscle and skin he had 'borrowed' from the corpse of Eddie's cousin.  
  
"You'll rot, you'll decay, you'll decompose," Bad Ash replied. "The worm's crawl in, the worms'll crawl out, etcetera. You'll get used to it after a while... kinda tickles, in fact. The key is to find donors so you can replenish."  
  
Eddie nodded. "Thanks again for not killing me... well, not permanently, anyhow."  
  
Bad Ash nodded. "Lucky for you I need a tour guide... and lucky for you that your cousin pissed me off more than you did."  
  
"Dumb son of a bitch," Eddie giggled. He knew he should feel bad about what had happened to Miguel. But he didn't. He didn't know how to feel bad about it, anymore. It was as if that aspect of his emotional range had been short- circuited. All Eddie felt was giddy. Giddy and sadistic.  
  
"I tried a mortal 'guide' last time around," Bad Ash continued. "Not sure what became of her. We lost touch when I got buried in the quarry back there."  
  
"Who buried you there?" Eddie asked.  
  
"That's not important," Bad Ash replied. "At least, not as important as finding my doppleganger."  
  
"Dopawhat?"  
  
"Dopp-- double," Bad Ash said.  
  
"Boy, if he's YOUR double he shouldn't be hard to find," Eddie giggled. "Just follow the screams."  
  
"He's not damaged like this," Bad Ash said gruffly. "Yet."  
  
Eddie laughed as he punched the dashboard. "This is gonna be fun!"  
  
"Damn straight," Bad Ash said. "First we find some fresh flesh, to cover up what we lose along the way. Then we'll track Ash Williams down."  
  
"And after we kill him, who do we kill next?" Eddie asked.  
  
"Everyone else," Bad Ash said with a smirk as the corvette raced down the street.  
  
  
  
End. 


End file.
